Hi Brenda. How's tricks? Halloween huh?
Ah Halloween, one of my favorite holidays. As a kid growing up in Southern California I was subjected to more than my fair share of evil tricks played by older kids in my neighborhood. They loved to steal your candy, throw eggs at you, and play any despicable, classless trick, they could get away with, and they knew they could, because saying anything would have been ratting. No one who wanted to be cool would ever rat out even their worst enemy.
I have a couple of great Halloween stories for you. One Halloween, I must have been around 7 and a long, long way, from the conscientious battler of tooth decay that I am today. Well I was making the local neighborhood rounds and I was making out like a bandit. My bag was filling to overcapacity and I could not wait to get back home to eat my candy. I had to have something, but it was so dark. I hate to eat something even as a kid and not know what taste to expect. It was too dark to see what was in my bag but I had to have something. My fingers roamed over my booty in a vain attempt to discover something I could eat and not waste the anticipation that comes from knowing just how good some candy really tastes. This was the early sixties and it was still common to find people handing out cookies or inviting little goblins in for some cake and a glass of milk. Stories about razor blades in apples, or LSD laced candy, were only the bad rumors of something that happened in someone else's city not our own. Anyway I had to eat something but what? I wanted to save the really good stuff for later and that's when I found it. A couple houses back some kid who was too old to be trick or treating had thrown some candy in my bag and something covered in aluminum foil. My fingers played with it trying to determine what it might be? Some kind of cookie? Who knew but since it wasn't regular candy there was no way to anticipate the taste of that little cookie anyway. I thought what the hell, I'll eat this little cookie wrapped in tin foil. I unwrapped it and took a bite but it was not sweet at all. What the heck was I eating, I mean what the heck was I spitting out? It was not candy, it was not a cookie, what was it? I ran under a street lamp and looked down at the cookie that was not a cookie... It was a.....
Milkbone Dog Biscuit!
Frankly I'm not too sure what all that tail wagging is about.
Anyway, a few years later I felt I was getting too old to be going Trick or Treating anymore but my parents encouraged me to take my little sister. They knew I still had a sweet tooth and that I would definitely want my share of candy so what could I do? I went but by then I had wised up to all the tricks going on and felt it was time to leave my own mark on the Holiday. Oh sure I could have become the typical Jack-O-Latern stealer, candy thief or egg thrower but that kind of cruelty has never been within me. I am a prankster. As much as I hated that Milkbone Dog Biscuit I thought it was a hilarious prank as well. Still even that was a little lower than I was willing to go, or was it. In a brilliant piece of reverie I came up with the way to top off my final night of Trick or Treating. I would end the holiday for all the little urchins who followed in my footsteps! It was my last Halloween and it would be their's too....Waa Haaa Haaa Haaa!
No I didn't poison anyone. I didn't steal any candy. I didn't even scare anyone. What I did was make around 50 signs with four simple words written on them. I taped these notes on some of the doors as they closed in front of me. My little sister had her candy and so did I which left only one thing, time for the trick. I had to wait until no one was watching. I couldn't do every house but it was with near uncontrollable mirth that I howled with laughter as little kids would walk up sidewalks only to turn around before ringing the doorbell. Parents sat inside their houses, peering out their windows, wondering, hey what's wrong with those kids? Why don't they ring the doorbell?
So to all of those adults out there who leave home to escape the answering your door on Halloween night. I can tell you those four words still work great. You'll never have to leave your house again to enjoy a relatively quiet Halloween night. Just tape a piece of paper on your door reading:
Sorry out of Candy
Got any new treats in your bag of tricks Brenda?
Regards, Jeff |
